Originally published in the November/December issue of SubPrime Auto Finance News magazine.

I may be a little old-school on this, but I still like to pick weeds in the yard. It's good exercise, makes the yard look nicer, and gives my brain a little down time.

There's a particularly pernicious type of weed in our area known as goosegrass. One of the things that makes this type of weed so devious is that, from far away, it looks like any other typical blade of grass.

Goosegrass spreads by seeds that germinate later in the season than other annual grasses, so you can't use pre-emergence herbicides to control it. And, if you don't pick this weed from your yard quickly, it will grow rather rapidly, dig in deep, kill the other grass, and take over your yard. Plus, you have to pull the weed up from the root, or what you leave behind will continue to spread. It's a daily battle, one I've been fighting, somewhat unsuccessfully, all summer long and now into the fall.

You may be wondering what weed pulling has to do with your dealership and compliance. Well, during my last weed-pulling session, I was thinking about how these sneaky weeds have so much in common with unscrupulous and unethical employees. You know the ones I'm talking about - those who may refer to a customer as a "fish" (sucker), a "roach," or a "rat" (a customer with really bad credit) and who say they are going to "tear someone's head off" (make a huge profit from a car sale).

These immoral employees may be the bad weeds who have infiltrated your dealership. They may compete with your ethical employees and do deals that couldn't, or maybe shouldn't, be done. They may be engaged in such scams as payment packing, power booking, faking credit credentials, requiring a service contract as a condition of getting financing, fanning, fluffing, or changing the cash price of a vehicle when they learn that the buyer has bad credit.

It's difficult, at best, to determine if you have an unethical employee at your dealership. That person may appear on the surface to look and act like your other ethical employees, but, on closer inspection, you can discern that he or she isn't ethical.

That employee's type of thinking and negative behavior can spread throughout the dealership like my goosegrass. But, once you learn you have an unethical employee, if you're not careful to pluck this weed from your dealership, it will grow rather quickly, dig in deep, overpower your ethical employees, and take over your dealership.

Open your email inbox on any given day, and you will see articles about dealership owners suing former GMs and F&I managers, alleging that they falsified credit applications with nonexistent trade-ins and down payments, listed the manufacturer's rebate as a customer's down payment, inflated incomes, and faked utility bills used as proof of a customer's residence for finance sources.

You've probably also read about FBI raids on a dealer's home and dealership and indictments for conspiracy, bank fraud, and wire fraud. One such indictment alleges that the dealer and his finance manager falsified down payments, inflated incomes, sold service contracts without remitting the paperwork and payment to the service contract provider, reported sales of vehicles to the manufacturer for vehicles that hadn't actually been sold in order to obtain expiring incentive rebates, and failed to inform their floor plan lender of sales in order to avoid the dealership's required payment to the lender for the sold vehicles.

How can you root out these dishonest employees before they damage your dealership?

Every dealer should have a Code of Ethics. Post it where consumers can see it, and have every employee read and sign it.

It is incumbent on dealers to mandate ethics and compliance training. Such training is protection against complaints and legal actions. Training and testing should be done routinely and periodically. Just because you don't see a problem today doesn't mean that you won't have one tomorrow.

Potential employees should be screened for ethical challenges in their employment histories. Reward employees who follow the rules (a compliance reward), and punish those who don't.

Finally, don't have a Code of Ethics that you ignore; if you claim in your Code of Ethics that you're walking the walk, but you really are only talking the talk, plaintiffs' lawyers will call that misrepresentation an unfair or deceptive act or practice and add another count to the complaint.

Unethical employees may yield early results, but they will create havoc and liability eventually, both for the other employees and the dealership. Better to root out those problems now or face issues down the road.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got more weeds to pick.

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